Eminem, Public Enemy, Tom Morello Bring All-Star Team-Ups to VH1’s Hip Hop Honors

September 24th, 2009 by Christopher R. Weingarten Leave a reply »

Photo: Mazur/WireImage
VH1’s Hip Hop Honors don’t air until Tuesday, October 13th at 9 p.m. EST/PST, but Rolling Stone was at the big event at Brooklyn’s Howard Gilman Opera House last night. At the sixth annual Honors, a cavalcade of stars paid tribute to Def Jam Records, the mainstay that laid the blueprint for the rap industry and launched the careers of everyone from Public Enemy to Kanye West. The room was packed to the gills with Def Jam friends, family and alumni — it’d actually be easier just to name who wasn’t there (notably: Jay-Z, Rihanna, Kanye, LL Cool J and the recovering Beastie Boys).

The first three performances were giddy with the energy of true rap geeks. The Roots opened with a rototom-heavy version of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nominee LL Cool J’s 1985 classic “Rock the Bells.” Guest spitter Eminem emerged for the second verse and started joyously trading lines with Black Thought like a pair of old friends.

Wale, KRS-One and Gym Class Heroes did a hard-rocking version of the Beastie Boys’ “No Sleep ‘Til Brooklyn” — a landmark collabo since we’re pretty sure KRS-One has never repped any borough besides the Bronx. Frontman Travis McCoy brought his hard rock flow and KRS-One naturally stole the spotlight with a custom-fitted verse that ended with “Yo, Adam, get well soon.” However, it sounded like Wale stumbled over MCA’s “lemon to a lime” line and started freestyling — which could open up a can of Internet worms like when Lupe Fiasco bungled a Tribe Called Quest verse at the 2007 Honors (tune in on October 13th to check it out). Either way, we know for sure that Jay-Z knows the whole damn song.

Most electrifying performance was the huge onstage clusterfuck of Public Enemy, the entire Roots band, a squad of S1Ws a...

Article Source: Rolling Stone : Rock and Roll Daily

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